The Chancellor Search Goes Haywire

Published: January 1, 1988

New York City's Board of Education appears on the verge of a mistake. Acting under pressure from borough presidents and the teachers' union, it has decided to consider Dr. Bernard Gifford, a candidate rejected by the board's own search committee. Such political intervention inevitably would handicap any chancellor it produces.

Last September Robert Wagner Jr., president of the Board of Education, announced an eight-member search committee to recommend candidates to replace Chancellor Nathan Quinones, whose retirement became effective today. The idea was to depoliticize the selection process.

The panel culled through a list of about 250 names, narrowing the field to a dozen serious candidates. One was Dr. Gifford, who had served as New York's Deputy Chancellor in the mid-1970's and now is dean of the Graduate School of Education at the University of California at Berkeley. But when the search committee submitted its final list 10 days ago, Dr. Gifford's name was not on it. The group apparently disqualified him because he had never presided over a school system. It also doubted his willingness to make the long-term commitment that rescuing the city schools would require. The three finalists are all heads of urban school districts.

None of them, however, have New York experience. That prompted the borough presidents and the head of the United Federation of Teachers, Sandra Feldman, to push for reconsideration of Dr. Gifford. Since his qualifications are not evidently superior, their support suggests they believe he might be easier to deal with, if not control.

But the reason the city needs a chancellor familiar with New York politics is so that he or she might resist union and community pressures when they stand in the way of needed reform. A chancellor hired as the result of such pressure would begin with an uphill struggle to establish credibility and independence. Why saddle so important a job with such unnecessary baggage?